Clint Watson - Blog: Art Websites and Selling Art Online

Last week we posted a piece titled "Less is More" - which essentially argued that every artist should have their own, stand-alone web site and that the big "online gallery" type art sites should be considered more as advertising as less as a replacement for a "real" web site. Yesterday, another, very well written art blog, Empty Easel, referenced that post and, while generally agreeing with our main point, they seemed to differ with us just a bit. We encourage you to read Empty Easel's post Are Personal Websites the Best Way to Promote Art Online?

Their post brought up several other items that we had not specifically addressed in our original post and we feel we should clarify a few things about FineArtStudioOnline, our artist website service, and our position in general. We apologize in advance for the shameless promotion but since FineArtStudioOnline was referenced in both our original post and Empty Easel's post we feel it important to point out a few things:

1. FineArtStudioOnline does support e-commerce via paypal (automatically) and a shopping cart is in the works - making buying easy is one of our official "10 essential elements" of an artist's web site.

2. FineArtstudioOnline does support and include a full SEO-Optimized blog with all Gold plans (in fact my blog entries, hosted on the FineArtStudioOnline platform, routinely get top rankings on Google) AND FineArtStudioOnline blog posts are the ONLY ones to appear daily in our email newsletter FineArtViews. (As far as I know FASO is the only art site out there that is also a full-featured blogging platform - not even the big art sites boast such a feature . . . at least that I know of).

3. We never said that big art sites were a "bad" choice (and we're not sure that EE meant to imply that we did), we only are saying to use the big art sites more as advertising and not to expect them to replace your own marketing personal efforts. . . which is where your greatest payoff will always come from.

4. Lastly, while sales are the ultimate goal and it absolutely is necessary to make it easy to buy, we still contend that the initial and main goal of an art web site is to capture visitor contact information. It takes up to fourteen contact points with a potential art buyer to "convince" them to take the plunge, so you must be set up to capture email addresses (FineArtStudioOnline automates this process). It's what you do after they sign up for your contact list that turns prospects into buyers. We found this to be true in our gallery days, even when we had a full-featured e-commerce site with thousands of pieces of art.

Sincerely,

Clint Watson
Software Craftsman and Art Fanatic

PS: We encourage you to sign up for our email list, FineArtViews - you'll receive daily wisdom about art, marketing, inspiration and fine living . . . and while you're at it, head on over to Empty Easel and sign up for their email list too - they have a sign up link at the bottom of the page.